But can't the argument br made that programming, or computing generally, is the process of automating information processing - automating thought? Any many public offices and servants, as well as many regulatory processes and management positions are nothing but menial mental tasks?
What decentralization provides is a platform on which these things can be automated and implemented much, much more easily than with traditional methods - because the issue of trust falls away. And, they are implemented in a way that is transparent to everyone.
Computing doesn't automate thought. It only automates processing data. In order to process anything, data has to be deliberately loaded from the real world into a computer. And in order for that processing to accomplish anything, a human has to take the results and take action on them.
If you think most social problems stem from people simply not knowing the right thing to do, then, sure, crunching some numbers might help. But my belief is that most social problems come from understanding the people around us, and having the right social structures and psychology to do the right thing. Computers will help with neither of those.
It's like having a nonfunctioning trackpad or display. No amount of software is going to fix that.
Processing data IS what thinking is. This literally what Turing intended to do: Find a way to automate thinking.
And a lot of what governmental positions today are doing is processing files, basically mapping files to files. A lot of corruption stems from the fact that this mapping can be done outside of the law with nobody noticing. This can be fixed.
Transparent to everyone able to read the code, perhaps. Those poor souls who have not learned to program in whatever defi language is hip this month will just have to accept that they will have no say in governance, nor even be able to discern what is happening and why. Bureaucracy is bad enough when it's made out of humans, let alone when you have unfeeling machines executing a (possibly buggy) script.
The point is that you CAN see the execution; wether you spend the time to learn to understand is your perogative. If you don't, you rely on experts, just like today. But unlike today, these experts can be independent of the process they explain.
What decentralization provides is a platform on which these things can be automated and implemented much, much more easily than with traditional methods - because the issue of trust falls away. And, they are implemented in a way that is transparent to everyone.